Point State Park
Background Point State Park is getting a make over. A 32 million dollar upgrade began in September, 2006. New lighting, plumbing and landscaping work began in September 2006. Officials say the work is expected to be in place by the end of 2007. The park re-opened, in part at the end of May 2008. Reopen in May 2008 About 250 pairs of scissors were on hand to cut the ribbon on the partially renovated Point State Park. The old fortification has been buried, a new lawn planted, paths refurbished and decorative lights and benches installed. All of the work has been done on the city side of the park. It is the first phase of a 32 million dollar renovation. The next phase includes the addition of 7,000 trees, shrubs and plants to a “woodlands area”, improvements to the walkways along the river, a new café and the instillation of public art. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell says the investment in the 36-acre park is this generation’s gift to the future to mark the city’s 250th anniversary. A public fund raising effort to refurbish the fountain at the point is to be launched soon. * FONTANA & WHEATLEY LAUD POINT STATE PARK PROJECT - 7/14/2006 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Links * Parks Media * The Point - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- July 2006, Great men poured scorn on the idea. Frank Lloyd Wright was one. Writing to a Pittsburgh civic leader, the world-famous architect lambasted the notion of saving the 'Triangle,' as he put it, on the basis of the old fort. Details * In 1951, a committee decided to put a large lighted fountain at Point State Park. It was finished 23 years later. From mid-1600s until around 1750, the Point was a forested tract without human habitation. In 1753, George Washington arrived. Frank Lloyd Wright pondered what to do with Point State Park Writing to a Pittsburgh civic leader, the world-famous architect lambasted the notion of saving the "Triangle," as he put it, on the basis of the "old fort." :"Such stupid things," he wrote, would "only add to Pittsburgh's present lack of grace a note of bathos no self-respecting community should tolerate." :The year was 1947, and Wright had submitted drawings for a 13-story building -- a slope-sided, tiered, circular structure whose main feature was a "Grand Auto Ramp" four-and-a-half miles long, capable of accommodating both slow and fast traffic. Wright proposed to top his design with a "glass shaft 500 feet high -- a light-shaft memorial to Fort Duquesne -- equipped for light concerts and broadcast music." Replying was Park H. Martin, the conciliatory executive leader of the Allegheny Conference, the civic group seeking to reclaim the Point. Martin conceded Wright had been told to produce a plan "on a scale of magnitude you conceived." But he added with studied understatement, "It was also agreed that you would submit a simple treatment of the park area." July 23, 1974 The fountain turned on when Three Rivers Stadium as just four years old. Point State Park fountain represented "a monumental column," a kind of exclamation point to Pittsburgh's efforts to rescue itself from decline and delay. Exposition Hall, constructed along the Allegheny River in 1889, briefly prospered. By 1918, however, the exposition craze had passed, and the hall was pretty much abandoned. By 1945, cavernous Exposition Hall served as a storage bin for rusting automobiles. An effort in the 1930s to the federal Park Service concerned the Point. Park Service officials said they might be interested, but first the city had to buy the land and agree to a complete reconstruction of the fort. Neither stipulation appealed to the leadership of the Allegheny Conference. Robert Moses, the commissioner of parks in New York City, submitted a plan. Wright did, as well, asked to do so by department store magnate Edgar Kaufmann. There were various other designs. One, from the 1930s, suggested a monument to explorer George Rogers Clark at the apex of the Point; another recommended a small parklet where the land meets the water. Park Martin had in mind a Point Park uncluttered by monuments, with a sweeping view of the rivers from Downtown and a fountain. That, Alberts writes, was what was planned when a wrecking ball flattened a 103-year-old house on May 18, 1950, signaling the start of the Renaissance. That the plan wasn't fully realized until 1974 with the opening of the fountain was largely a result of a problem that had stumped city fathers for decades: What to do with the two bridges -- the Point and the Manchester -- that spanned the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers, respectively, in the plot of land reserved for the fountain? Not even the resourceful Mosescould figure a way around the bridges, and their arterial links to the West End and the North Side, at the time he was thinking about the problem in 1939. It took another 10 years for city planners to come up with workable alternatives in the Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne bridges, and still more time to fix the most vexing problem: How to throw a span connecting the two bridges over the park -- in fact, over the middle of the park -- without destroying the sight lines from Downtown to the rivers. Construction of the portal, as the eight-lane, 23-foot high connector was called, began in 1961. An engineering marvel, the portal is chiefly characterized, as far as the public entering the park is concerned, by three curved vaults and four heavily reinforced concrete ribs, all on its underside. Even when the portal was complete, the razing of the bridges caused more delays. Point Bridge didn't come down until the summer of 1970, followed soon afterward by the Manchester Bridge. Civic and political leaders are again mulling plans for Point State Park in 2006 The idea is no mere spruce up, but neither is it a radical departure. The most controversial portion of the $35 million restoration is the plan to fill in the military ditch that helps visitors visualize the outline of Fort Pitt. The most novel is the proposal to have the design and initial work on the park, indeed all of Renaissance I, serve as one of three "themes" visitors to the park will learn about. According to the comprehensive plan developed by the Allegheny Conference, "Reinventing Pittsburgh: The Renaissance and Point State Park" will stress "the planning and development of the Point, including Point State Park, as a reaction to industrialization. It explores how Pittsburgh confronted pollution and urban 'blight,' and invented new mechanisms for urban renewal." Laura Fisher, of the Allegheny Conference, says "there were a million ideas on the table" as planning got underway. In the end, the park theme won out, because the story of the park has so many compelling elements, including big men on a big mission. It was, Fisher adds, a story that is "unique" to Pittsburgh, a story that could be told in no other place.